$7M Grant from Villum Foundation to SUNCAT Center

SUNCAT researchers receive $7M funding for sustainable nitrogen reduction from the Villum Foundation.

A team of researchers at the SUNCAT Research Center at Stanford and SLAC receive $7M from the Villum Foundation (http://veluxfoundations.dk/en) to elucidate the science of sustainable fuels and chemicals. The research project involves a consortium of three Danish universities together with SUNCAT, totaling more than $20M. SUNCAT Director Jens Norskov looks forward to being able to open a new, consolidated effort to understand how to convert molecular nitrogen (N2) electrochemically to form ammonia (NH3), the primary component in fertilizer: “Imagine being able to make fertilizer directly in the agricultural field where the crops need it, using sustainable electricity from a solar cell”. Other faculty and scientific staff at Stanford and at SLAC who will contribute to this project include Thomas Jaramillo, Stacey Bent, Zhenan Bao, Matteo Cargnello, Thomas Bligaard, Frank Abild-Pedersen and Aleksandra Vojvodic. The SUNCAT researchers look forward to collaborating with a number of Danish colleagues led by Prof. Ib Chorkendorff at the Technical University of Denmark.

“We will be part of a very strong team, attacking some of the biggest challenges in chemistry and sustainability” says SUNCAT Deputy Director Thomas Jaramillo.